Planescapin'

Last week I posted a column about Dave Hargrave's Arduin books. I got a lot of responses from people saying, "I'm so glad you still revere the 'old school' of gaming, Monte." And it's true. I wrote Labyrinth of Madness and A Paladin in Hell for 2nd Edition, and Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil, all clearly "old school" adventures. However, I also spent years working on Planescape, and I loved it for reasons that are not old school at all.

Planescape was more than just a new D&D campaign setting, and it was more than just "the planes." It represented a whole outlook on gaming. While you could play Planescape (and have a great time) just fighting tanar'ri in the Abyss and not give much thought to any of the rest of it, Planescape offered opportunities for more. The main setting, a city "at the center of the multiverse" called Sigil, was run by groups called factions. The factions each had a different outlook on the universe. Thus, by joining one of the factions, or simply by dealing with them as players, you were compelled to think and sometimes even argue about the nature of reality.

Planescape was strong on story -- when you're writing material dealing with the various realms that make up the multiverse, how could it not be? The product line encouraged writers to take one more step, and go farther afield than traditional medieval fantasy. It encouraged players to do more than just fight everything they encountered, particularly because so much of what they encountered was more powerful than them. It encouraged DMs to set up encounters where the players really had to think, and the PCs had to interact with others.

Editor Ray Vallese, designer Colin McComb, and I referred to things that were a little weird, or a little out there, or something that makes you think a bit (often things that were not straightforward) as "Planescape-y." The movie Dark City, or the writings of Philip K. Dick, for example, we described as "Planescape-y."

Some of my best writing, I think, can be found in Planescape products. Dead Gods, a mega-adventure dealing with the "rebirth" of Orcus, was one of my personal favorites. (As an aside, I find it ironic that people blame Planescape for the nixing of Orcus, the changing of demons and devils to tanar'ri and baatezu, and things like that. That wasn't Planescape -- that was TSR management. Planescape was actually the setting that brought that stuff back. Orcus didn't die in Dead Gods: He came back. And the first use of "demon" to describe Chaotic Evil fiends in 2nd Edition was in Planescape. The designers and editors of Planescape labored under those restrictions and were as bothered by them as the fans. We did what we could to deal with them in interesting ways.)

So why do I bring all this up? Simply to say that it's not necessary to throw in with one camp or another when it comes to gaming. Dead Gods, for example, had some of these strange aspects but it also had a part that was a straight homage to (sort of a "return to") Vault of the Drow. A blending of old and new school. The adventure I'm working on for Malhavoc Press right now -- The Banewarrens -- is a similar sort of project. Plenty of trap-filled dungeon crawling, but also a lot of story-based interaction with NPCs and a weird plot with lots of twists. Old school, new school: Whatever labels you want to put on things, all aspects of gaming have some fun opportunities to offer.

If you want to read more about Planescape, check out Planewalker.com, the official fan site.

 

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